The Great AI Exodus: Why Senior IT Leaders Are Leaving Corporate Jobs to Build Their Own Startups
For decades, the pinnacle of a career in Indian IT was the corner office—Vice President, Global Head, or Chief Delivery Officer at one of the country’s sprawling technology services firms. It meant stability, prestige, and a substantial paycheck.
But a growing number of senior executives are now turning their backs on that path. The hottest new company to work for is their own.
Since mid-2025, at least a dozen US-based senior executives have exited large IT companies to launch new ventures, as the rise of artificial intelligence has created a sweet spot for them to turn into startup founders. This trend is not limited to the United States; it is accelerating in India as well, with seasoned technology leaders betting their decades of experience on the promise of agentic AI.
The most recent signal came on April 18, 2026, when Coforge announced that its Executive Vice President, Anup Kumar, had resigned to pursue an “entrepreneurial route”. His departure is just one data point in a larger movement that is reshaping the talent landscape of India’s tech industry.
Why Senior Leaders Are Taking the Leap
What is driving this exodus of experienced talent? For those making the jump, the answer lies in a fundamental shift in the economics of technology services.
The Rise of Agentic AI
“AI has neutralised the advantage of scale,” said Venkatgiri Vandali, a former president at FirstSource who left in February 2026 to co-found Simplify Alpha. Vandali and four other senior executives from FirstSource’s healthcare unit departed together to launch their venture.
“The trigger for me was agentic AI,” echoed Jayaprakash Bandu, who recently left a senior leadership role at Mphasis to co-found an AI startup that is currently in stealth mode. “I spent 26 years in enterprise IT, and for the first time, I saw a technology shift where a small team could build in weeks what used to take hundreds of engineers and years. That is what made me step out and start building.”
The Small Team Advantage
Unlike previous technology waves that required armies of engineers and massive capital expenditure, AI has levelled the playing field. A small, agile team with deep domain expertise can now compete for work that once required the scale of a multinational corporation.
Gaurav Parab, Principal Industry Analyst for IT Services at NelsonHall, explained the dynamic: “Senior leaders are leaving big IT firms because, for the first time, a small AI-native team can win the kind of work that once required an army of engineers. Without the baggage of legacy structures, they can innovate faster, capture niche opportunities such as sub-industry use cases that large firms overlook, and scale through networks they’ve built over decades”.
The New Model: Filling the ‘Last Mile’ Gap
These experienced founders are not aiming to build the next foundational AI model. Instead, they are targeting a specific, high-value niche that they understand intimately from their years inside large enterprises.
Targeting the Mid-Sized Problem
Vandali of Simplify Alpha described the opportunity clearly: “Everyone wants to chase the hundred-million-dollar transformation. But the real, unmet demand is in the trenches — the two-million-dollar problems that are too complex for a junior team and too small for a global firm. We built Simplify Alpha to fill that exact gap. And the client’s appetite there is insatiable”.
His new venture has already partnered with a healthcare software provider and carved out and acquired their implementation practice, bringing in 400 engineers. This speed and decisiveness—leveraging a deep network built over decades—is a hallmark of this new wave of founders.
From Consumer Tech to Deep-Tech
This trend is not limited to IT services. Veteran founders who built large consumer internet companies are also moving into more complex, longer-gestation bets. Suvonil Chatterjee, former Chief Technology and Product Officer at Ola Electric, left to launch Manav, a robotics startup focused on industrial use cases. Farid Ahsan and Bhanu Pratap Singh, co-founders of Sharechat, are building in the robotics space with their new venture, General Autonomy.
Udaan co-founder Amod Malviya has launched Pre6, an AI-led advanced manufacturing startup, while Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal is self-funding multiple deep-tech ventures, including longevity research startup Continue with about $25 million and aerospace venture LAT with around $20 million.
This pivot from the fast-paced world of consumer internet to the methodical, research-driven world of deep-tech reflects a maturing ecosystem where founders are now willing to tackle harder problems.
The VC Perspective: Backing Experienced Operators
Venture capitalists are taking note. Investors see that the best founding team for an AI-enabled services startup would have “deep domain expertise of selling, building and delivering software in the target domain”.
The speed at which these executives can win clients is also crucial to the investment thesis. Unlike first-time founders who must build networks from scratch, these experienced operators can pick up the phone and reach decision-makers at the world’s largest enterprises.
Ashish Taneja, founder of GrowX, a venture firm focused on deep-tech investments, noted, “If a founder built a successful enterprise before, that experience definitely matters. You understand how to hire teams, raise capital and build organisations. That is fundamentally important”.
However, the journey remains challenging. Arpit Agarwal, partner at Blume Ventures, observed, “While the firm is seeing some second-time founders explore deeptech and AI, the shift is still limited. I wish more seasoned founders would take this jump. Deeptech demands a very different mindset”.
The Double Whammy for IT Services
For large IT services companies, this trend presents a dual challenge. Not only do they lose top talent, but they also face new competitors who understand their internal workings intimately.
In the case of FirstSource, for example, the healthcare unit contributes over 30% to its revenue. The departure of five senior executives from that unit to launch a competing AI venture is a significant blow.
As AI continues to compress delivery timelines and reduce the need for massive teams, the pressure on traditional IT services models will only intensify. The executives leaving to build their own ventures are, in effect, building the tools that will compete with their former employers.
What This Means for the Ecosystem
This wave of entrepreneurial reinvention has profound implications for India’s startup ecosystem.
1. Domain Expertise as a Moat
These founders bring decades of institutional knowledge about how large enterprises operate. They understand the pain points, the decision-making processes, and the compliance requirements in ways that younger founders cannot match. This domain expertise is a significant competitive advantage.
2. Faster Path to Revenue
With established networks and reputations, these founders can often secure their first clients before they have even incorporated. This shortens the “valley of death” that plagues many early-stage startups.
3. A New Category of AI-Native Services
These ventures are not traditional IT services firms. They are AI-native from the ground up, built to leverage agentic AI for efficiency. They represent a new category of hybrid services-software companies with the potential for higher margins than traditional outsourcing.
4. Deepening India’s Deep-Tech Bench
As more experienced founders move into deep-tech areas like robotics, aerospace, and advanced manufacturing, they bring management discipline, customer focus, and distribution capabilities that have historically been lacking in India’s research-driven sectors.
The Final Word
The departure of senior IT leaders to launch AI startups is a clear signal of a maturing ecosystem. These experienced professionals are betting that their deep domain knowledge, combined with the leverage of agentic AI, can create ventures that are more agile, more focused, and ultimately more competitive than the corporate giants they left behind.
As Gaurav Parab of NelsonHall noted, this trend is expected to accelerate going forward. For India’s technology industry, this means a continued churn of top talent, the emergence of new competitors, and the gradual reshaping of a sector that has been a cornerstone of the Indian economy for decades.
For the founders making the leap, the motivation is clear. After decades of building for others, they are now building for themselves—leveraging the most transformative technology of their lifetimes to solve problems they know better than anyone.
